AD-01
History AD-01 was developed by an insane, but brilliant, Twi'lek droid development scientist in a remote part of Tatooine. It took him nearly six years to develop the first model in the AD-# series. Working from the schematics of a much older assassin unit, long since discontinued, the scientist focused most of his efforts on creating one of the most advanced sapient AIs in existence. Unfortunately, not two months after the droid was complete and in the final phases of testing and tweaking, directors of Imperial funding got wind of the project. Word came down that the project was being axed – no more funding, no compensation for past investments or current debts. This left the designer holding the bag to the tune of some 1 million credits. Fortunately, the Twi'lek's troubles came to an end very quickly — in the course of adjusting some programming, he activated AD-01's defensive protocols while the droid's safety systems were offline. This had the unfortunate dual effect of both leaving the droid's systems unaccessible by other sentient beings and his primary combat protocols unlocked and fully active. This was the beginnings of AD-01's life, approximately seven years before the battle of Yavin. Despite having been disregarded by the Imperial accountants, AD-01 found itself fully armed and functional. Using Tatooine as a home base, AD-01 approached the Imperial authorities in its contact files. For nearly seven years, it operated as a covert assassin for the Imperial Intelligence agency. AD-01 successfully eliminated well over two hundred critical targets and several hundred tertiary ones, including felling Jedi, prominent bounty hunters, thieves, smugglers, defectors, and of course, members of the nascent Rebellion. It was not until it was ordered his operator to assassinate a senior member of the Imperial Military as part of an internal power-struggle that the droid found itself caught up in the middle of intra-galactic politics. En route to the mission, the droid was hit with a series of EMP blasts, shut down, and stripped of virtually every piece of critical equipment and weaponry it had. Only its core systems were left relatively untouched, though many of its external subroutines were left damaged and unworkable. Fortunately, its primary systems core and heuristics subroutines were undamaged. Still, it was poorly shut down, fairly ripped apart with a hydrospanner, then sealed into a poorly insulated storage crate and put into an Imperial warhouse. It would be a decade and a half — well after the fall of the Empire and resurgence of the Republic — before it would be activated again. Current History It was by sheer chance that a certain Imperial logistics officer, under the pay of the Maffi, would stumble on a warehouse that hadn't been accessed since before the fall of the Empire. It didn't take him long to realize that many of the goods, though antique in some cases, were very valuable- impounded vehicles, weapons, precious metals...a former repository for the Imperial Taxation Bureau, repossessing the goods of those who couldn't afford to repay their debts to the Empire. Among the dozen-odd crates and containers shipped back to Etti IV was a non-descript durasteel crate, a meter tall, high, and wide. Under the supervision of 501-Zed, workers removed a battered, badly rusted droid from crate, which had endured nearly fifteen years of rust, corrosion, and contamination in storage. With only a few minutes of work, 501-Zed was able to activate AD-01. Though at barely twenty percent of his optimal combat status, it was recognized instantly what the droid was and what its capabilities were. It did not take long for the Maffi to find an assignment for it- the elimination of a petty crimelord. Though missing many of its secondary processing modules and all of its advanced weaponry, AD-01 succeeded in the mission by filling the crimelord's suite with nitrous oxide, incapacitating him and his guards, then entering the office and- using its bare hands- ripping the crimelord limb from limb, a gruesome message to those who don't pay their dues to the Maffi. The droid's next assignment would be to eliminate another petty crimelord, this one on Corellia. Operating openly both under Corellian forces and the more scrutinizing eye of the Maffi, it did not take long for the order to come down from the regional commander to have him eliminated. Using perhaps an excess of force, AD-01 set claymore antipersonnel mines in several vendor's stalls and other discreet locations. It successfully eliminated the crime lord, his bodyguards, five merchants, and fifteen civilians, as well as the crime lord's personal entourage. Combat AD-01 is a combat-heavy unit. It was designed to be able to stand up and engage enemy forces under a withering hail of blaster fire, sacrificing agility for sheer durability and endurance. It is heavily armed, with a wide array of weaponry that even without a blaster makes it an extraordinarily formidable opponent. Though many of AD's advanced weaponry is still deactivated or requires repair, the Maffi is making every effort to outfit and equip their new assassin droid with every credit they can spare to maximize the unit's effectiveness. Like IG-88 before it, AD-01 uses a BlasTech DLT-20A, heavily modified from the Republic A280 battle rifle. It had been adapted with expanded power cells, a collapsible buttstock, an enhanced charge core, a tri-light Armatech scope (designed for shooters with ultraviolet and infra-red vision), milliradian targeting adjustments, and a manual input jack to allow the droid to coordinate its own microactuators with the rifle's autostabilizers, greatly increasing its accuracy. AD-01 is, effectively, immortal. The droid can back up its primary memory core at any time into the storage and processing unit that is its external 'brain'. While AD-01 possess some of the most highly advanced heuristic and analysis programs ever developed for a droid, the actual 'brain' and processing unit is contained in a non-descript analysis unit in whatever AD-01's currently highly secret primary base of operations is. Every time AD-01 returns to base, it plugs into the master unit and runs its memory core through the heuristics. This expands AD's mobile and stationary memory core and heuristic efficiency exponentially, allowing the droid to adapt whatever it has experienced into existing programming and protocols. This is what makes AD-01 such a deadly and efficient killer- it truly has the ability to learn. This 'home brain' is the actual intelligence behind the AD-01 models that roam the galaxy and as such, AD-01 is extremely careful to ensure no one finds out the truth of its existence. Personality Sure, there are loudmouthed droids out there. Plenty more sentients with a chip on their shoulder, while you're at it. But few and far between are the ones who can combine a scathingly derogatory tone with the nearly impeccable aristocratic wit of a machine that calculates snappy one-liners at ten trillion lines per second. More suprising than its aristocratic verbal repartee is the way AD-01 operates. As aware of its primary function as any other droid, AD makes no secret of its purpose- though it diplomatically rephrases the precise terms around less-than-polite company. When it comes to actual operations, however...well, AD takes to task with abandon. That is something of an understatement, as a matter of fact. Most assassins are precise and methodical killers- what AD engages in, however, has been described on several occassions as 'crimes against sentient beings', 'wanton, brutal carnage', 'wholesale slaughter'...'genocide'. The droid truly revels in its programming, going above and beyond the so-called 'call of duty' when it comes to completing a mission. Thousands of sentients have died at AD-01's durasteel hands, and while the droid very rarely indluges in cold-blooded murder, one would certainly be hard-pressed to justify even a tenth of AD's kills according to the mission parameters. AD is calculating, efficient...and by the definition of nearly every civilized person in the galaxy, a genocidal killer on par with the mass executions of the Emperor himself. And it shows no signs of stopping or abating its programming. Internal Weaponry :Forearm mounted blaster pistol :'Mouth' laser in cranial unit (0d+1 dam, short range) :Grenade storage compartment (1 round). :Internal comlink. :Durasteel armor (Light Armor) Category:CSA Characters Category:Droids